Rabbi-Chaplains of the Civil War

Rabbi Dr. Arnold Fischel arrived at the White House on the morning of Dec. 11, 1861, prepared to act as a one-man lobby for the constitutional rights of Jews. He had traveled alone from New York, on his own dime, bringing several letters of recommendation from prominent Republicans and one from the Board of Delegates of American Israelites, then just three years old and the country’s only national Jewish organization.

One of Abraham Lincoln’s private secretaries told Fischel that there was little chance of a meeting. But the rabbi was persistent, taking his place among hundreds of people hoping to see the president, some of whom had been waiting for three days. To Fischel’s surprise, Lincoln immediately received him with “marked courtesy.” The rabbi stated the reason for his visit: On behalf of the American Jewish community, including several thousand soldiers fighting for the Union, he hoped the president might reconsider a discriminatory law forbidding his people to serve as chaplains.
It was a controversial proposition, and one that had its roots in the very onset of the war. Five months earlier, Lincoln had called a special session of Congress and requested a $400,000,000 budget to fight the Confederacy, a portion of which provided for the inclusion of chaplains in the Volunteer Army. The ink had barely dried on the proposed draft when Representative Clement Vallandigham, a non-Jew, objected to its wording — that a chaplain be a “regularly ordained clergyman of some Christian denomination.”

The Ohio Democrat urged that the requirement be changed to a “regularly ordained clergyman of some religious society” and made a surprisingly impassioned plea to his colleagues: “There is a large body of men in this country, and one growing continually, of the Hebrew faith … whose adherents are as good citizens and as true patriots as any in the country … While we are in one sense a Christian people, and yet in another sense not the most Christian people in the world, this is not yet a ‘Christian Government,’ nor a government which has any connection with one form of religion in preference to another form.”

American Jewish Historical SocietyRabbi Arnold Fischel

But Vallandigham’s colleagues remained unconvinced, partly because of deep-seated anti-Semitism within their ranks and partly because it was Vallandigham who had raised the objection; the congressman, later one of the leaders of the “Copperhead” movement, had lost both friends and influence with his vociferous anti-war sentiments. His amendment was rejected and the Senate made no change in the measure. Lincoln signed it into law on July 22, 1861.

This session marked the beginning of a significant and unprecedented episode in American history. From the time of the American Revolution, when George Washington relied on religious leaders to improve morale at Valley Forge, military chaplains were overwhelmingly Protestant, with Catholic clergy being recruited for the first time during the Mexican War. Since few of the country’s Jews served in the Army before 1861, the issue of Jewish chaplains was largely theoretical — a stance that changed after the attack on Fort Sumter, when thousands of Jews answered Lincoln’s call for volunteers (by the war’s end, about 7,000 Jews would serve in Union forces). If Jews were willing to risk their lives for their adopted homeland, shouldn’t they be afforded the same religious ministrations available to their Christian comrades?

The answer was not long in coming. On July 18, four days before Lincoln signed the chaplaincy bill, the 65th Regiment of the 5th Pennsylvania Cavalry elected Michael Allen, a Philadelphia Hebrew teacher and businessman, to serve as their chaplain. In all likelihood, the regiment acted in ignorance rather than defiance of the impending law. Although not a rabbi, Allen had studied for the rabbinate before changing careers to become a liquor salesman. When the law took effect, the regiment’s commander, Col. Max Friedman, did not ask Allen to step down. The chaplain proved popular with Jews and non-Jews alike, transcribing letters for illiterate soldiers, teaching English to newly immigrated volunteers and offering nondenominational services (so nondenominational, in fact, that rather than conduct Jewish services in camp on the Sabbath and the Holy Days, he left to attend synagogue in either Philadelphia or Washington).

Allen’s tenure as chaplain came to an abrupt end in September, when a Y.M.C.A. volunteer visited the 65th Regiment’s camp near Washington and rushed out with the news that a Jewish chaplain — and an unordained one, at that — was serving in the “Army of the Lord.” The ensuing frenzy of protest prompted the assistant adjutant general of the Army, George D. Ruggles, to issue a warning that “any person mustered into service as a chaplain, who is not a regularly ordained clergyman of a Christian denomination, will be at once discharged without pay or allowance.” Allen immediately resigned his commission on the excuse of “poor health” rather than suffer the dishonor of dismissal from the service.

Embarrassed and enraged, the 65th Regiment decided to test the chaplaincy law and elected a replacement: Dr. Arnold Fischel, a native of Holland and minister of New York’s Shearith Israel Synagogue, the oldest Jewish congregation in America. In choosing Fischel, a scholar and ordained rabbi, the officers wanted to make it absolutely clear that if the War Department rejected his application, it was not because he lacked the proper credentials but because he was a Jew.

As expected, the War Department denied Fischel’s request for a commission. Fischel and the Board of Delegates of American Israelites immediately began a campaign, fully aware of the difficulties that lay ahead. The American Jewish community numbered only 150,000 people, less than one half of 1 percent of the total population, and many of them were too apathetic or too poor to contribute to the cause.

Fortunately many non-Jews, fearing that the law presented a potential threat to their own constitutional rights, offered enthusiastic support. Throughout the North, entire towns — even those with few Jewish citizens — sent petitions to Washington: one containing 700 signatures from Baltimore; one from 37 members of the New York legislature; one from Bangor, Me., signed by 200 people, only three of whom were Jewish; and others from towns like Columbus, Iowa, and Edinburgh, Ind., whose Jewish populations were virtually nonexistent. Fischel, meanwhile, gathered his letters of recommendation and journeyed to Washington.

President Lincoln listened to Fischel’s grievance and “fully admitted” the justice of his remarks, stressing that he believed the exclusion of Jewish chaplains to have been unintentional on the part of Congress. He added that it was the first time the subject had been brought to his attention. Four days later, on Dec. 15, he sent Fischel a letter:

My dear sir:

I find there are several particulars in which the present law in regard to chaplains is supposed to be deficient, all which I now design presenting to the appropriate Committee of Congress. I shall try to have a new law broad enough to cover what is desired by you in behalf of the Israelites.

Yours truly,

A. Lincoln

Lincoln’s letter, while encouraging, only signified the beginning of the battle. Having convinced the president, Fischel now had to persuade Congress, and he began meeting with the appropriate committees and speaking privately with numerous legislators. He encountered strenuous opposition from Protestant groups and Christian publications, like the Cincinnati-based The Presbyter. “Jews regard Jesus of Nazareth as an impostor, a deceiver, and one worthy of every term of reproach,” the paper opined. “And yet, (should this bill become a law, which God forbid it should,) the government would, in effect, say that one might despise and reject the Savior of men … and yet be a fit minister of religion.”

But the most troubling objection came from a major segment of the Jewish community. In January 1862, six prominent rabbis issued a statement backing the repeal of the discriminatory law but denying that the Board of Delegates of American Israelites was the representative agency for all American Jews, thereby undermining Fischel’s authority and exhaustive lobbying efforts.

Nevertheless, the majority in Congress came around to Fischel’s point of view. Both the Senate and House passed the amending legislation, and on July 17, 1862, President Lincoln signed it into law. Now the chaplaincy statute read:

No person shall be appointed a Chaplain in the United States Army who is not a regularly ordained minister of some religious denomination, and who does not present testimonials of his good standing as such minister, with a recommendation for his appointment as an Army chaplain, from some authorized ecclesiastical body or not less than five accredited ministers to said denomination.

Within two months, Rabbi Jacob Frankel of Philadelphia was commissioned as a hospital chaplain, thereby becoming the country’s first Jewish military chaplain. By the end of the war, two others would be elected: Rabbi Bernhard Gotthelf, who administered to sick and wounded soldiers in Indiana and Kentucky, and Rabbi Ferdinand Sarner of Rochester, the first regimental Jewish chaplain, who served the 54th New York (also known as the Schwarze Yaeger, due to its predominance of German-speaking soldiers).

Arnold Fischel never joined their ranks. The Board of Delegates, in a letter to Lincoln, requested “the appointment of a chaplain to the hospitals in and around Washington, so that the pain of our suffering brethren may be assuaged and their mental agony soothed.” Although one of Lincoln’s private secretaries endorsed the application, it was rejected by the surgeon general, who reasoned that since only seven Jews were hospitalized in the capital, there was no need for a Jewish chaplain in the Department of the Potomac. In October 1862, Fischel returned to Holland to live with his mother, never to see America again.

Karen Abbott is the author of “Sin in the Second City” and “American Rose” and a featured contributor to Smithsonian magazine’s history blog, Past Imperfect. Her next book, about female Civil War spies, will be published in 2014. Her Web site is www.karenabbott.net.

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